[lit-ideas] Re: Wall Street and Capitalism
- From: "Judith Evans" <judith.evans001@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 22:07:09 +0100
Well we all did when America moved from defined pension plans more DIY
pension plans. Even if reg'lar folk don't hold stock directly, their DIY
pension funds do.
Obviously. Indeed, I 'hold stock' (held stock?) at one remove, through my
pension fund's trustees. But that is not IMO the same as
PS>the tens of millions of people who
PS>lived beyond their means for years by taking advantage of something,
PS>which in the mind of anyone with rudimentary arithmetic skills, should
PS>have been (and indeed was) [predictably] going to collapse?
When stock trades cost a hundred dollars each,
working stiffs didn't buy stock.
I didn't realise they were nine dollars now. But let me ask again and push
my true point again. Is buying a few shares
as risky, as contributory to the current collapse, as buying houses at
vastly inflated prices -- with large mortgages -- on the assumption that
their 'worth'/market price would continue to rise and rise, something which,
in the mind of anyone with rudimentary thinking skills and/or a memory
longer than fifteen years, was patently untrue? Is taking -- under a lot of
pressure from alleged experts -- an endowment mortgage as opposed to a
repayment mortgage, as contributory? Is listening to one's bank manager and
putting savings in higher interest 'low/medium risk' savings rather than
lower interest plain savings accounts as risky (etc.)?
I am, I add, not guilty of any of these, indeed, I haven't even got more
than £35,000 - the initially guaranteed amount --- in a straightforward
savings account (which the bank can use to buy derivatives, of course...,
but I refuse to feel either guliry about that or proud of banking with
Boring Lloyds). But I venture to suggest that the polloi who did these
things and so 'lived beyond their means for years' are not the truly guilty
here, and some should not really be blamed at all. Whether they should all
be bailed out is another matter; the British Government's full guarantee for
all individual savings in Icesave has apparently been made not because
those who invested more than £50000 are thought worthy of full redress, but
because of a fear of a run on banks, of a confidence crash, should the
guarantee not be granted.
Judy Evans, Cardiff, UK
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Ritchie" <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 9:42 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Wall Street and Capitalism
On Oct 9, 2008, at 1:12 PM, Judith Evans wrote:
How many 'reg'lar folk' bought stock?
Well we all did when America moved from defined pension plans more DIY
pension plans. Even if reg'lar folk don't hold stock directly, their DIY
pension funds do.
But Paul is right. When stock trades cost a hundred dollars each,
working stiffs didn't buy stock. At nine dollars a trade, and with
everyone who knows someone who has made one good decision, the temptation
is far greater.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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